Things We Never Thought We Could Be
by maxbyfive
Summary: A collection of very short stories involving Max and Logan in various situations. Updated 111307. Wow, it's been a while.
1. explanation

Over the past few weeks, I've been writing some stories that are too long to be drabble, but too short to be actual stories. They're all written in about five or ten minutes and are all Max/Logan in various situations. There will be more in the future and evenutally I'll be finishing up the stories that I've already started and posting them on here. (I swear, I will. Really.)

For now, though, I thought people might enjoy reading these, and so here they are. They're uploaded in the order that I wrote them, so don't try to look for a time frame or theme, there isn't one.

Hope you enjoy.

- Carlee

PS: I'm more than open to suggestions if anyone out there has situations they'd like to see Max and Logan in. Just leave a comment letting me know what you wanna see, and constructive criticisim is very welcome.


	2. breathe

They're being careful. Starting out slow, touching their hands to one anothers, palm to palm. Their fingers intertwine and when nothing happens he leans forward and captures her mouth in a kiss.

She's not sure if this is really happening or if it's another cruel but sweet dream and she decides that if it is she never wants to wake up, because if she does, they'll never be here again. She's denied herself sleep even on the rare occasions she needs it because she doesn't want to dream about this and wake up sad and lonely and alone.

His hands and mouth move from her hands to her face, his hands cupping her face and his mouth trailing kisses from her forehead to her cheek to her mouth to her neck and then back to her mouth again.

She wonders if she should do more but he seems to be more eager to please her than to be pleased by her and he undresses her slowly and carefully, running his hands all over her, as if daring the virus to come back, and she holds her breath, still afraid she'll wake up in the next breath she takes and this will all have been her subconscious playing a very mean trick on her.

He notices her concern and guilt and frowns, then moves to whisper one word into her ear.

"Breathe."

She finally does and it's not a dream like it's been so many times before and they kiss and touch and hold one another until the sun comes up and they fall asleep, finally sated after nearly two years of unbridled passion are finally consummated, in each others arms. 


	3. lingering

It's something their friends have noticed about them lately. Ever since they've stopped denying how they felt about each other, they can't stop touching.

They try to keep it subtle, not wanting to give the onlookers a free show. Hand holding, playing with hair, shoulder and neck rubs, wrist tickling. Their fingertips always linger on their skin until the last possible second before one of them is called away to work or a friend or enemy or whoever else is daring enough to break them away from each other.

Their eyes lock on each other before they separate and do whatever it is whoever it is is bugging them to do, and when they reunite the same look is in their eyes. A look of love, passion, and fire, the same look that's always in their eyes when they look at each other. They clasp hands and kiss and touch and whisper.

"Missed you." 


	4. five simple steps

It feels like it's taken them forever to get here. Which seems ridiculous to both of them, because the steps were so simple.

The first was asking her to come over for dinner. Nothing unusual, just another one of his spur of the moment culinary miracles. She accepted and helped him prepare dinner as much as he would allow her to, then they sat and ate by candlelight.

The second was bringing the conversation around to the topic of their relationship around dessert time. They don't discuss the evolution of their relationship often, it feels to them like experiencing it all - from her breaking into his apartment to her getting shot and recaptured to her escaping and the hell that was the virus to finally, finally, finally finding a cure and the time afterwards spent cherishing the touch of skin on skin and lips on lips that was denied to them for far too long - was hectic and memorable enough so that they don't have to talk about it. But bringing it up was necessary to take the next step.

The third step was him kneeling in front of her chair, taking her hand with one hand and extracting a small box from his pocket with the other. She knew what was in it before he even asked her, but she let him ask the question anyway:

"Are you still open to the idea of jewelery?"

The fourth step was her wrapping her arms around him and kissing him again and again and again and whispering the word "yes" again and again and again.

The fifth was them breaking apart long enough for him to slip the ring on her left ring finger before picking her up and carrying her into what will soon be their bedroom and their bed for as long as they both shall live.

Thinking about all they had to go through to get to that point, Max wishes that some things had gone differently, but as she looks at the sparkle on her finger that reminds her that all of it was worth it to get to this. 


	5. done waiting

It's taken the search for another Manticore lab tech months and now that he's finally found one, the cynical side of him asks what the point is. But he picks up his phone and dials the numbers because he's promised himself to keep trying. Even when all hope looks lost.

The cure is found but it's not easy, it takes weeks for the lab tech to finish. He sees her several times during that period but does not say anything because he does not want to intrude on her happiness, even if it's making him miserable.

When it's finally done he goes over to her place to give it to her - just so they can talk about and do things for the transgenics and Eyes Only missions without having to worry about whether or not an accidental brush of their hands will send him back into a dance with death.

Alec is there and he is not surprised. What he is surprised by is the fact that he is yelling. Anger flares through him, he told him to be good to her and he's going back on his word and it's all he can do not to open the door and punch his lights out. Then he hears his words.

"I'm not going to do this anymore, Max. Lying about this isn't doing either of you any good and you both need to grow up and sort things out before things get wrecked beyond repair."

He hears her about to voice a protest when the door suddenly opens and Alec and Max are standing there. Alec's expression is one of exasperation and surprise and Max's is one of shock and fear.

He can only imagine what his face looks like.

Alec nods to Logan before pushing past him to leave. "Maybe she'll listen to you."

Alec is gone for what is either a few minutes or an hour before Max steps aside to let him in. Her eyes don't meet his as she sits on her couch, her hands folded in her lap.

Logan sits next to her and she stiffens, inching away.

"Max -"

"I shouldn't have let you think that. That I was with him. It just seemed easier. And I'd rather have you hurt than have you dead."

"Max -"

"He didn't want to go along with it and I didn't even let him know at first, but he told me you talked to him and didn't say anything so I figured it was taken care of."

"Max -"

"And I know you deserve better than that, and better than me. But I just...I can't, Logan. I can't risk losing you." Tears fall from her eyes onto the stained carpet, she still can't look at him.

He reaches over and takes her hand in a hand of his that is still gloved - she hasn't taken the cure yet - and looks at her. "Max."

She finally looks up and into his eyes as he produces a small vial and a hypodermic needle from his jacket pocket.

She draws in a breath and stares at the vial, as if she can't believe what she's seeing. "Is that what I..."

"Yes."

"But...how, I thought that..."

"It took me a while, but I managed to track down another lab tech. It took a few weeks and cost me a few bucks, but I think it's safe to say it was worth it." He smiles slowly at her.

Her eyes spill over and she can't stop smiling. Wordlessly, she lets go of his hand and rolls up the sleeve of her sweater until a vein is exposed. He fills the needle and injects the cure into her and they sit and wait the amount of time the lab tech said to wait until it was safe.

After two hours, he pulls off the gloves and cups her cheek in his hand.

They wait, barely breathing. One minute, two minutes, three minutes, four.

Nothing happens.

He cups her other cheek with his other hand and waits. One minute, two minutes, three minutes, four.

Nothing happens.

Two years, three weeks, two hours, eight minutes.

Logan decides he's tired of waiting any longer and brings her face to his and kisses her.

Neither of them make it to work the next day. But they've waited for each other long enough. Now the world can wait for them. 


	6. cooking lesson

This was not his idea. He would never be one to sacrifice his kitchen like this. It's his kitchen after all, and he likes everything in it to be just so, and even though he knows Max will be careful and not mess anything up on purpose, he's still nervous.

She comes in with the groceries he asked her to pick up and smiles at him as she sets them down on the counter. He smiles nervously back at her and they stand in a slightly awkward silence for a minute before she pulls out the pasta and other ingredients.

"So let's do this."

His hands are on hers as he shows her the proper way to cut the vegetables, as he shows her how to arrange the food on the plates. His eyes are on her as she laughs as she stirs the sauce and as she goes over to the wine cabinet to pick out the wine they'll be having with their meal. This is a side of her he hasn't seen very often, light and playful and happy.

The meal is fun and delicious and they make small talk and joke and tease each other. It's comfortable and calm, two things that neither of them are very accustomed to.

Unless they're with each other.

Before she leaves for the night, wanting to get home before curfew so Kendra doesn't worry, she helps him clean up the kitchen they've made dirty and gives him something she forgot to give him before - a small container of chocolate covered peanuts. When he thanks her, she shrugs, saying it was the least she could do.

She's about to go out the door but stops, then walks up to him again and gives him a hug. She's hugged him before but now she seems to be giving more of herself with it, putting her head against his shoulder.

It's a while before she pulls back and smiles at him before giving him a quick kiss on the cheek.

"Thank you."

She leaves then and he sits, wondering if they're ready for whatever the night was. 


	7. infectious interruptions

If Logan had been paying any attention to Max as she walked into his apartment, he would have noticed, apart from her flushed cheeks and shallow breathing and anxious demeanor, that she seemed to have an energy radiating from her, making the room buzz.

However, he was completely absorbed with an Eyes Only mission that had recently popped up, so he didn't even hear her come in, nor did he notice her shedding her jacket and tossing it aside or hear her slinking up behind him until she was leaning over his shoulder, the scent of her hair and warmth of her body bringing him to full alert.

"Hey."

"Hey," he says, slowly, smiling at her before he goes back to typing.

Max notices this and pulls back a bit, frowning slightly. She is silent for a moment before reaching a hand out to him and slowly tracing it along his shoulders, applying a bit of pressure where she feels tension.

"You busy?" The tone of her voice suggests to him that even if he is, he might want to stop what he's doing and pay attention to her.

Logan stops typing and slowly removes his hands from the keyboard, but not before he saves his work, not wanting to lose it. "No, not very."

A sly, feral smile crosses Max's lips.

"Good."

She grabs the back of his computer chair and whirls him around before he has time to think, tearing at the collar of his shirt and kissing him like there is no tomorrow.

He responds by kissing her back and pulling her closer to him, onto his lap, a hand rubbing gentle circles along her back, letting her know she is loved, knowing how this makes her feel like a wild animal and wanting to let her know he doesn't think of her that way, will never think of her that way.

She pulls away and looks at him, smiling softly, thanking him with her eyes, before kissing him again, burying her hands in his hair, rocking against his hips, pulling closer to him and rubbing against his chest.

Both of their bodies on fire, as if the heat is infectious, he circles his arms around her waist and carries her off into their bedroom, feeling a bit guilty about having to leave his work, knowing that he won't be able to get back to it for quite a while. 


	8. sixth sense

Max isn't sure how she knows something's wrong. She can just feel it. A sick, twisting feeling in the pit of her stomach, that something, somewhere, is going wrong, and that someone she's close to is in serious danger.

She calls his phone just to make sure, to reassure herself that he's fine, that she's worrying over nothing. Part of her mind is even saying that she just wants an excuse to talk to him again, just one last time, before she disappears to God knows where.

She's not expecting there to actually be something wrong. When Bling answers her call and she hears the sounds of the hospital in the background she can't get off the phone and out of his uncle's cabin fast enough. Even the fact the Zack is chasing her and telling her to get her head in the game doesn't stop her. Later on she will wonder how she was able to beat him, she would never say it out loud but she knows, deep down, he could have made her leave with him if he'd really wanted to.

She hitches rides on the backs of trucks until she gets to the right hospital and the ride takes too long, the minutes going by like hours. Max has never been a patient person but the urge to get somewhere has never been this strong, this urgent before, and she knows it's because she could never forgive herself if she was too late.

When she hears what's wrong, she knows what she has to do and waits until they're left alone to do it, sticking the needle into a vein and watching as the blood goes from her body into his, thanking God and everyone and everything else she can think of that she wasn't too late. She's even grateful, at that moment, to Manticore, for making her able to give him what he needed.

She watches and waits and waits and waits until the effects of donating her blood seeps in and she's feeling groggy and dizzy and tired and she lays her head on his chest, eyes closing, and she drifts off to sleep, listening to the faint sound of his heartbeat and praying that that sound will still be playing when she wakes up. 


	9. red

When he told Max it was a formal affair and she'd said it wasn't a problem, he'd just figured that she was going to borrow a dress from Kendra or Original Cindy. Neither of her friends really dressed in a way that suited Max's personal style - both wore clothing that was a little on the revealing or outlandish side - but he knew she would take what she was given and put her own spin on it, finding a way to make it work, make the look her own.

The last thing Logan is expecting to see when he stops by Jam Pony to pick her up is Max in a floor-length red dress, her hair worn up for the first time he has ever seen her wear it up, curls carefully covering her barcode. She smiles at him as she walks towards him, only she doesn't so much walk to him as she does strut casually to him. It is the way she usually moves, with a casual grace and sensuality he knows she has to be aware of, but the red dress she is wearing makes it stand out, making her glow. Max is always beautiful, in whatever she wears, with whatever she does, but the color red seems to bring out something more in her and he can't put his finger on what it is, but he can't take his eyes off of her.

She smiles at him, playfully, genuinely.

"You clean up nice."

"So do you."

Understatement of the century.

He is now a little worried about the evening to come - knowing Max as he does, and with her looking like this, he had a feeling no one is going to be paying attention to the wedding ceremony.

He hopes Bennett's wife-to-be isn't the catty type. 


	10. can't walk away

Max leaves his apartment, storms out of it, furious. He's got her. He's got her and he knows it and that pisses her off. If she'd known he was going to try to lay his guilt trip on her, she never would have bothered checking in on him.

It wasn't just her wanting to stay under the radar. If she did this for him, it'd mean having to see him every day. Having to be reminded of how she could have stopped it.

Not that she feels guilty.

She tries to forget it after she leaves, but knowing that he's found more on her brother in a few days than she's managed to come up with in the past nine years bothers her, and guilt or something similar is weighing heavy on her mind. She hadn't even bothered to say no, just thrown the file back at him and walked out. Looking back, maybe that was a little harsh, but she had been pissed.

She sits for hours, going over possibilities in her head. It's not like she owes him anything. She never asked him to do this for her.

But he did it anyway, when he could have just dropped the whole thing when she made it clear the first time she wasn't interested in helping him. Even more than the information on Zack, she can't ignore that. Can't walk away from that, no matter how much she may want to.

So she finds herself at his apartment the next night, picking the lock and walking in (noticing it already feels comfortable to do so). She finds him by the picture window (he's had it fixed by now) with a glass of wine and he turns when he sees her in the reflection, looking somewhat but not entirely surprised.

She almost smiles at him, but doesn't. Instead she looks at him with a blank expression, her everyday mask, the one she's used to wearing but already feels like she can drop around him.

"So what is it you want me to do?" 


	11. always cry at weddings

As the couple are exchanging their vows, Logan's attention wanders to the crowd in the church. In the pews there are relatives he hasn't seen in years (and never really wanted to see again) and family and friends of the bride that he's never seen before. He searches for Max's face in the crowd, hoping to see the one familiar face that doesn't make him uncomfortable, thinking maybe if he sees her his smile won't be so fake.

He's shocked to see her dabbing at her eyes with a tissue that's been offered to her by someone he doesn't recognize - she must be one of Marion's (or is it Mary Anne's?) relatives. Oh, he knows it's not uncommon for women to get teary-eyed at weddings, but he never would have expected to see Max as one of those women.

It surprises him that she's moved to tears at something this traditional, a tradition she'd been mocking not two hours ago. He'd thought she'd be bored to tears tonight, not moved to them.

It occurs to him, not for the first time, that she's constantly surprising him, and he wonders what she has in store for him next. 


	12. naked

Logan is slow with her, careful, so unlike how it's been before, treating her like something delicate, fragile, even though he knows more than anyone else that he's not gonna break her.

He undresses her slowly, taking items of clothing off carefully, like he's unwrapping something treasured. Something loved. His fingertips trace over her body, over the lines of her palms, the curve of her shoulder, the slope of her collarbone, and then he replaces his fingers with his lips.

He starts at her neck, his tongue pressing gently at the pulse of her throat, feeling her heartbeat speed up. It beats faster and faster as his mouth trails lower, his lips dragging over her skin, teeth unleashing from lips to scrape gently across her shoulder.

He stops suddenly, nestled between her breasts, and he nuzzles against her chest, pressing his lips to her breast bone.

"I love you." She might not have heard it if not for genetically enhanced hearing, and his eyes - the blue so clear now, without the barrier of his glasses - glance up to her face, wondering if she heard, if it's too late to take it back.

She pulls at his forearms, pulling him up until she can connect with his mouth, kissing until she can't breathe anymore but she doesn't want to stop, she wants to keep drinking him in, for hours, days, weeks at a time.

Max finally lets him pull away and drag in a breath of much-needed oxygen, and her fingertips trace carefully over his features, lingering at the corner of his lips before she finally tells him.

"I love you, too."


End file.
